Clarence Delaney

"What time is it?"

Clarence

Clarence Delaney opened up his eyes as wide as the alarm was loud. He lay waking up in a twin mattress in the corner of his apartment on Welson Avenue in Nearport, Newtopia. He couldn't control his concerns as they volleyed from last night to the quiet house he now had to his back. The springs on the mattress flexed as he sat up and the room became clearer. He adjusted his back, laid down, and closed his eyes.

                The second time he woke up he heard noise from the kitchen that suggested he was not the first one awake. Normally, his boys slept well past eleven on weekends when there were no games on TV. He heard rain begin to patter on his tar roof and mapped out the three places he needed to put pans in case the rain persisted. The leaks were in the bathroom in front of the toilet, in Kaylee's room at the front of her bed, and near the foot of his.  He got up and marched to the kitchen to retrieve the appropriate equipment and see who was already up.

The hallway from his room to the kitchen connected everything else.  He passed the staircase going down on his right, then Kaylee’s bedroom on the left, then the bathroom on the right, then then his oldest son’s bedroom, and met the threshold of the kitchen at the other end.  His daughter greeted him, “Hi, dad.” She had brown hair like both of her parents but got it from her mother.  Clarence had blonde hair most of his life but it only just turned brown not a week after he divorced Laura Bradley.  Kaylee was short but his boys were all either his height or taller.  Donny and Neil, twelve and fourteen respectively, stood just over 5’8’’ and had bright blonde hair.  They all shared the darker Newtopian skin their mother and most Newtopians had.  Clarence had pale skin; bleached by his parent’s European ancestry and dry Indiana summers he experienced when he was a boy. 

Kaylee was above the stove cooking eggs and bacon while the other two prepared the table.  The scene was so beautiful to Clarence that he didn’t want to interrupt.  So he turned back down the hallway to check Nate’s room.  When he opened the door it let in just enough light to reveal his first born was not in his old bed or the house he surmised.  When he returned to the kitchen Kaylee, almost fifteen already, that’s too fast, was unloading a shipment of food onto a center plate.

“Where is Nate?” He asked.

“Well believe it or not he went home.” Neil’s tone was as bitter as it was fresh.  It bid Clarence to take a step back and realize this scene was not for him.  It was just a scene. Guilt flushed into his gut briefly, “What time is it?”

“Eleven forty-five,” Kaylee said slowly as if to count out each minute he had slept in.  He must have fallen asleep a second time. Why didn’t my alarm go off? And the clouds from the storm system must have made it seem earlier than it was.

“Gosh Darnit,” he said remembering he had to prepare pots around his house for the various leaks. “Donny get me three pots from the stove.”

“Oh dad,” Kaylee chimed pausing for effect, “we actually made a keish so we moved the pots.  Is that ok?”  She lifted her finger and pointed across the kitchen to a scattered pile of pots and pans.  Clarence smiled when he actually wanted to frown.  But the smile shuttered into a sigh and the sigh into full blown laughter.  They were all laughing by the time he had collected the pots.  He gestured to Donny and said, “follow me.”

Donny was only twelve but was familiar with each spot that required a pot during storms and heavy snows.  No leaks had yet formed in the bathroom.  But a handful of darkened splotches greeted them when they entered Kaylee’s room.  Clarence told his youngest to fetch a towel.  He had a piece of bacon in his mouth when he returned and Clarence pulled at it.  Donny growled but Clarence persisted and freed the other half for himself.  Kaylee shouted that everything was ready.  Clarence sent Donny back to the kitchen deciding to place the final pot himself.  Just as he suspected there were also a few drops at the foot of his bed.  Placing the pot down he stayed his knees bent to enjoy the relief from his sore joints.  Sore from the night before.

He almost fell over when he heard the banging.  It was loud and persistent.  He pushed up from the floor and walked past the staircase and Kaylee’s room. He walked towards the kitchen following the loud knocking. The scent of breakfast ingested his nose and mouth and head and soul.  His feet pounded as he went sending steady ‘thuds’ through the carpet and oak floor to the empty downstairs.  Passing the bathroom and Nate’s room he scrapped his foot on the threshold of the kitchen.  He would have cursed had he not been so crippled by the pounding from the door and in his head from the night before.  Neil and Kaylee were standing up looking at the front door while Donny remained seated there at the table.

Clarence grappled with his pants, pulled them up and approached the door.  It was a hollow, wooden door gilded with a recent finish.  The knocks sounded louder than they were intended Clarence knew, due to the make-up and design of the door.  But even these knocks were loud.  And loud in his experience either meant really good or really bad. Usually the latter. He moved his hand towards the handle but paused when Kaylee said, “Dad!”  But when he turned to her, his ear and nose were in sudden shock and pain and water was rushing in from outside.  The door was caught on his foot and he heard a woman shout, “Move you oaf!”  He had only one thing to do and ripped his foot out and took a step back.  Laura Bradley walked in dripping wet.